Hunter of Genius

Cape Town, exquisite little city at the tiptoe of the tumultous African continent, is home to some of the most interesting people I’ve had the honour of meeting.
[If you happen to live here too, find yourself understimulated, and assume there's no depth here - uh oh! have you been MISSING OUT - we may be poorly connected not poor culturally. As a community developer & networther I would LOVE to get you connecting dots with some of the powerful, passionate people here : connect in & tap into some underground genius // & share some of yours?!]

One of the geniuses I celebrated recently on SA Rocks, has joined forces with another ..and finally launched Accelerate Cape Town into the digital playground. Congrat’s Guy!

In the interests of getting the conversation started around re.creating our city the Web AddiCTs have a fun competition for imagineers: My Perfect City Challenge.

I remember reading about one of the Ivy League schools (possibly Harvard) putting out a similar challenge and getting wild wacky AND workable solutions that were successfully implemented. Environmental and human.scale factors featured prominently. But unlike the polite community of a university town.. our city jostles between 1st and 3rd world : ideas, attitudes, infrastructure, cultures that don’t mix easily - a little like oil and water - fairly benign until things start hotting up and then it starts fizzing and spitting ..suddenly it seems like a terribly sensible idea to get the hell out of the kitchen. Which sadly catalyses a dreaded brain.drain.

Fortunately, many volatility-tolerant social entrepreneurial types stayed behind to grab the opportunity to make a difference and a good living. Some helped build bridges between the techies and the marketers (Mike, I know you are a good capitalist, the fact that you do good en route doesn’t make you a flaky philanthropist :-P). Some proactively filling in the gaps where the city fell dismally short on the basics. There are SO many stories of people doing good here : SA Rocks celebrates them, Greater Good SA, SA the Good News among many others. We yearn to be helpful no matter where we find ourselves in the world.

Frankly, though we all think that we need better infrastructure to even begin, that the odds are stacked against us at the bottom of Africa, none of this matters when you have a determined, visionary group of brave people. I remind you of the words of anthropologist Margaret Mead

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”

Inspiring visionaries can turn a city’s destiny and self-esteem around. Of course Guiliani’s incredible re.vision of New York comes to mind. But for South Africa, may I suggest we look to someone who had to deal with conditions akin to ours for guidance. Jaime Lerner is an inspired urban warrior, architect, mayor and Brazilian senator, a genius who transformed one of Brazil’s capital cities, Curitiba, into one of the most respected and modelled cities in the world for its efficiency, environmental and resource management and generally happy place to live and feel human¹. Read a little about what life is like in Curitiba for inspiration if you’re entering the competition.. (you can win even if you don’t live in Cape Town BTW, just submit what you think would make a perfect city for you - wherever you are)

Fast Company did a feature on the World’s fastest cities 2007 (Curitiba’s there, Jo’burg there - Cape Town not yet!). Feeling some fighting spirit kicking in there. So all you brilliant marketers, greenies, architects, designers, techies I know & love >> let’s flex a little creative muscle and re.vision, re.brand & re.create a city, just for kicks.

(I’m keen for hitting the Creative Class Meccas category or Urban Innovators class? Madam Mayor what say you?)

Creativity comes when you cut a zero from your budget
- Jaime Lerner

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1. Guy, Martin, Dave, Jon, Sheryl, Helen ..please can we organise to jet this fellow into town for a power strategy session on co.creating our city [↩]